


Attached

by thelma_throwaway



Series: The How-It-Was [7]
Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Sexual Tension, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:08:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22293952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelma_throwaway/pseuds/thelma_throwaway
Summary: Candy, flowers, nice things he’ll never buy her. Frilly, fancy nothings that belonged in a teenager’s diary or a dirty novel. Kind words, small favors, a thin, hot chord of caring-- these he can’t help but give.
Relationships: Jayne Cobb/River Tam
Series: The How-It-Was [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592782
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Attached

**Author's Note:**

> not mine, everyone is 18+. smutty w/ a dash of bdsm at the end

He tries to make it clear in no uncertain terms that he won’t be sweet. He won’t go against his nature, won’t make a fool of himself.

“This ain’t no courtship,” he reminds her, apropos of nothing one night. They’re standing guard in a particularly pathetic and cutthroat shanty town, light refracting in an eerie green through the half-finished biosphere. 

“What?” Her eyes are scanning the steady stream of locals passing them by. 

“Ya heard me fine.” He grunts and refuses to say more. Not that she asks. I don’t think I ever said I wanted to be courted, she thinks. She’s made it pretty clear want she want.

He had caught himself earlier, fixing closed the top button of her shirt. It’s hot as hell but dust has a way of getting everyplace and with the wind whipping it around it could score your skin red and burnt. She’d been babbling idly, commenting on the construction of artificial environments and the chemical properties of acid rain, not even expecting him to listen. He’s sure it’d make sense to a smarter man. She’s going on and on, and he catches himself smiling, buttoning her top button against the sand while she twirls thoughts above his head. It’s too cozy. Too… committed. 

After the jobs done he tries to forget her at a sad little brothel, but all the girls on this turd of a planet have dark hair and sharp collar bones and look like they’d just as soon cut your throat. It’s no good for driving River from his mind.

Candy, flowers, nice things he’ll never buy her. Frilly, fancy nothings that belonged in a teenager’s diary or a dirty novel. Kind words, small favors, a thin, hot chord of caring-- these he can’t help but give. 

He finds her deep in a junk store, its stock so rusted and dustcaked that its impossible to tell whats what. Before he even opens his mouth, she turns and whips the broken oscillator she’s holding at his chest.

“Why are you trying to start a fight?” She wishes the flow of thoughts and half-known truths could turn tide and run the other way for once. Arguing with him makes her scalp hot, makes her feel red and irrational.

“I ain’t start nothing.” He goes to pull her close by the waist but she pushes away and he can see in her expression she isn’t playing. “I did start something, huh?”

“Listen careful,” she says drawing him down to eye level by his lapel. “I don’t want promises. I don’t want presents. You’re the one who told me get what I need however I need it.”

He starts to grumble and she twists his collar around his throat. Despite the angry look in her eye (or maybe because of it) he feels himself twitch under the belt. 

“You catching feelings, Jayne?” she says with a sly smile. “Going soft on me?”

“Jus’ the opposite.” He goes for a kiss but she jerks away again, drawing him deeper into the shop. Shelves of old tools and timeworn kitchen gadgets arch perilously above them but she wiggles between them like she’s been here before. “Where we going?”

In the back of the shop they find an abandoned little corner, the last curl in a maze of stacked machinery. She presses into him the shadows, holding him by the front of his coat. “ We said everything would be real casual. Remember?”

“Ya said neither of us is capable of uh-- co-mitting to a mature and emotionally healthy relationship.”

“Do you recall why?” A hand runs down his chest and stomach, ghosting over his thighs. His cock rises to meet her fingertips. 

“On account of us both being crazy and ruthless.” She grins and slips a hand under his belt, fingers tracing the outline of him before finding their way against his skin. He hisses at the sharp crescent of her nails on the underside of his cock. “Tried to forget about you witha girl tonight.”

“Hmm.” She considers the sight of him--- dick out, panting and obedient to her palms in the back of a junk shop. “How’d that go.”

“I jus’--uhnnn-- I jus’ don’t want us to get overly attached.” 

She scoffs. Attached suggested an orderly connection, two well made halves fitting together with great purpose. Entangled made more sense-- forgotten things that found themselves knotted up inextricably. “The inability to control that is precisely the reason we should avoid a formal arrangement.”

He mumbles something that sounds like  _ control _ just as he starts to lose it, “That’d mean no more of this.”

“Not if you keep your strings to yourself.” 

He thinks of her bound up and bent over for him with that minxy little smile of hers. He’s balanced on the fine edge with his eyes squeezed shut when he says, “Not likely.”

Her hands stop moving, breath held like a stunned doe. 

“River?” He’s still gasping for breath, for release. He pops open an eye and goes cold. She’s gone and he’s left standing, cock growing cold and dust tickling his throat. Her laughter echos from somewhere in the coil of aisles around them. He’s frustrated, half-jerked and leaking against own pants, has no idea how he’ll get out of here. “Dammit!” 


End file.
